Bennett still pushing for citizenship question

Census » Senator wants undocumented immigrants excluded from count
by Matt Canham



Updated: 10/07/2009 06:10:23 PM MDT


Washington » Utah Sen. Bob Bennett has switched strategies in his bid to get the Census to exclude undocumented immigrants when assigning congressional seats to each state.

In recent weeks, the Utah Republican has pushed legislation that would require the Census Bureau to collect citizenship data in its once-a-decade count, but in a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday he said his proposal would "obviously" not pass in time to impact the 2010 count.

So he teamed with Louisiana GOP Sen. David Vitter to offer an amendment to a budget bill that he thinks could result in a quick policy change. The amendment would cut off funding for the Census unless this citizenship question was asked on all future counts.

"This is an attempt to find out how many illegal aliens we have in this country and where they live as a statistical information," Bennett said.

The proposal would not impact funding formulas for federal programs, and the information collected could not be legally accessed by law enforcement.

Bennett said the only purpose in collecting the data is to make sure the Census doesn't count non-citizens when it assigns seats in the House of Representatives. He said the current system benefits states with high numbers of undocumented immigrants, which would mainly be border states.

"A state with a large number of illegal immigrants will see to it that its voters have greater representation than voters where the illegal immigrants are not," he said.

Census leaders have argued that it is too late to make a change to the 10-question Census form. The Bureau must print millions of copies before they are mailed out in March. The printing process is already under way.

Bennett, who faces a tough re-election fight, dismissed this by saying: "I wonder if they ever thought of printing an extra sheet."

The Senate is expected to take up this amendment and others impacting the Commerce Department, which includes the Census, in the next few days.

mcanham@sltrib.com

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